When I saw the title “Offensive Combat,” I got really excited. Would I be offending my foes until their poor hearts became physically incapable of taking it any further – relentlessly barraging them with all manner of incredibly personal insults and hatefully ignorant comments about the things they hold dear? No, as it turns out. I’ll be doing nothing of the sort. But I will be shooting them! I suppose that’s a fairly offensive action, isn’t it?

For now, details are fairly scant. Developer U4iA is headed up by former Activision senior VP Dusty Welch, who helped launch Call of Duty back in the days when it lacked frightening realistic future war staples like horses. The goal is to repeat that widespread core-focused success in browser-based F2P form, albeit with more pretty colors. Here’s the basic (and currently only) rundown:

“Offensive Combat will feature the most competitive multiplayer action ever seen within a browser, enabling players to harness their skills and use their creativity and ingenuity to win the ultimate mash-up of first-person shooters. The browser version and the mobile/tablet versions of the game are interconnected, and work together unlike any game before. The full Offensive Combat experience will be detailed in the coming weeks.”

“The innovative gameplay, guided by industry veterans from Activision, Sony, and the Call of Duty and Guitar Hero franchises, will feature an irreverent mash-up of first-person-shooter archetypes, weapons and themes, including surreal fantasy, futuristic sci-fi, and modern military settings, among others. Offensive Combat launches later this year, but select fans will have an opportunity to be one of the first to explore the game during a limited beta this summer.”

Hooray for vague videogame announcements! I fully plan to pester U4iA for more details, but until then, my optimistic side can totally get behind the idea of a shooter that takes shots at the genre’s brittle, well-worn bucket of cliches. Granted, the press release is almost worrisomely focused on business acumen and “strategic private funding,” but chest-thumping is in no way a surefire guarantee of a lackluster game. Nor is browser focus, for that matter.

I don’t think it can be called a man with those bird feet, I hope part of the offense is making some genetically altered player character that’s an offence to natural selection, that’d be great. I’d make a half man half crab person.

Gecko head, tentacle arms, lovely Hawaiian shirt, and robot legs. All of which are available in the cash shop for a nominal fee, start customizing your avatar today!

It suddenly occurs to me: If you can buy random arms for your avatar, does that mean they have to design 3-D models of each possible combination of purchaseable hands and player-perspective weapon views? Or do they just go “pffff, here’s your standard gauntlets”.

Reading a bit through their blog I spotted this:
“we wanted our game to be free, but we also wanted to let players buy and rent items to customize their experience”
is this a new form of micropayments? the microrenting?

As opposed to In-offensive Combat where they are shocked at the faux pas committed by the opposing player and retire away to write long grammatically correct internet tete e tetes on each others blogs.